The European Commission Innovation Scoreboard for 2023 will soon be published, in which, according to our information, only Hungary will be up to par.
The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) is a comparative analysis of the performance of the European Union, other European countries and their regional neighborhood that has existed since 2001. As the official wording:
It assesses the relative strengths and weaknesses of national innovation performance and helps countries identify areas that require intervention.
Performance-based rankings fall into four categories:
- leading innovators (more than 125 percent of the EU average),
- Strong innovators (between 100 and 125 percent of the EU average),
- moderate innovators (between 70 and 100 percent of the EU average),
- Emerging innovators (below the EU average of 70 percent).
last year Even three EU member states, the Netherlands, Cyprus and Estonia, were able to advance, but according to our information, this year
Only Hungary will be changing the categories, going from Emerging Innovators to Moderate Innovators.
There will also be a change at the top, in 2022 it was Sweden, and in 2023 Denmark is already the best innovator.
How much innovation does Hungary have?
Looking at the most recent eight-year sample, the improvement in the European Union as a whole was 8.5 percent. By comparison, Cyprus has achieved an impressive improvement of 35 percent, Hungary is just below average at 7.7 percent, while France and Luxembourg have fared worse. little value.
The general fact is that geographically more developed and less developed regions can be identified, with the northern, Scandinavian and western countries advancing faster, while the southern and eastern regions slower. In terms of categories, this means that the top and left flank of the European map holds the most powerful leaders and innovators, and the bottom right regions hold the largest number of moderate and emerging groups.
Looking at the sub-areas within innovation, the picture is incomplete, as there are themes where the EU falters, while, for example, the capacity for digitization is improving by leaps and bounds.
Located at the crossroads, Sweden is one of the best performing countries overall, specifically topping two sub-categories, in terms of human resources and employment.
Budapest is the drag
Based on the regional innovation scoreboard (RIS), which is combined with the European one, another basic fact that is valid for the entire EU is that capitals are more innovative than rural areas.
Most of Hungary, for example, still belongs to the up-and-coming category, but at the same time, the province of Pest is already a member of the top ten among arrivals, and Budapest stands out.
So much so that, in general, he really helped the country move to a higher category.
He was standing with that Presentation made by Tibor Navraxkes, Minister in charge of Regional Development and Resources of the European Union At the Hungary 2030 Conference of the Institute for Balance in April, when he spoke generally on the development of Hungary in relation to the European Union. Budapest, he said, is developing at a rate of 156 percent, but our worst region, the Great Northern Plain, is developing at only 49 percent, and the capital city is growing at 206 percent of GDP, which is 4.7 times faster than Nograd.
Photo: Tibor Bogdos/Mediaworks
The lesson of the current innovation scoreboards is that the EU is also lagging behind in the world.
Last year’s summary already mentioned that that while “the European Union and its member states are committed to excellence-based, competitive, open and talent-based research and innovation” and the disadvantage has diminished, “global competitors such as Australia, Canada, South Korea and the United States in performance advantage remain”.
It hasn’t changed much yet.
In addition to the world leader, South Korea, Canada, the United States and Australia are also ahead of the European Union. The aforementioned, only the difference against Australia has not increased.
The good news is that Japan is behind us, and at the moment China is there too, but it may overtake us in the near future.
What are the differences?
The interesting thing about the methodology is that it was referenced last year in connection with the European Innovation Scoreboard: interim data was used for many of the indicators in order to work with the latest information, which obviously produced a different end result than if they had just dealt with the data. enclosed.
In national and regional comparisons, using a different amount of indicators in a survey leads to different results: for example, if the 21 factors used in the regional analysis were applied to countries as well, then the beneficial effect of Budapest would have evaporated, and Hungary would have remained among the emerging innovators, and not yet.
